“To say I was in love will vex the reader beyond endurance, but he must remember that being in love had a peculiar meaning for me. … It meant a desire to lay my personality at someone’s feet as a puppy deposits a slobbery ball; it meant a non-stop daydream, a planning of surprises, an exchange of confidences, a giving of presents, an agony of expectation, a delirium of impatience, ending with the premonition of boredom more drastic than the loneliness which it set out to cure.”

Cyril Connolly (1903—74) the author of Enemies of Promise, was one of the most influential critics of his time, who wrote for such publications as the New Statesman, the Observer, and the Sunday Times.